A good friend of mine wrote this as part of her commencement speech at UCLA. I read it today and liked the way she described Asian American Studies and its relevance to society...
"Graduates—as many of you may have experienced as advocates for your degree, it appears that Asian American Studies is one of the most contested majors on this campus. When asked, “What are you studying at UCLA?” I already know what the person is going to think when I respond, “Asian American Studies”. Sometimes I cringe in response because i can feel the oncoming skepticism ready to flood the conversation. “What are you going to do with THAT degree?” “But you’re already Asian American. Isn’t college about studying something you DON'T know?” These two questions challenge the value and relevance of Asian American Studies, two things I will now address in my speech.
What is the value of Asian American Studies? In modern day society, there is a general assumption that college is about spending thousands of dollars every year to invest in post-graduate opportunities for improved living and sustainability. This leads us to wonder: what kind of jobs will we land with a degree in Asian American Studies? Especially during a time like this, with the pending doom of our economy, a financial crisis questions the promise of anything ethnic studies related for the financially secure future. But if there is one positive thing the recession has done, it is make us realize that financial security is never guaranteed. With money evaporating before our eyes, we question the value of the dollar everyday, and return to a core set of values that lie within us—family, community, history. In understanding the history of marginalized people, decentralizing the master narrative and dismantling the power structures that create social hierarchies, Asian American Studies empowers students with the knowledge and critical thinking skills to lead our communities through any crisis to come. The value of Asian American Studies to empower generations of leaders transcends inflation rates.
What is the relevance of Asian American Studies? With Barack Obama as our first black president, are we not in a “post-racial” society? The answer is No, we are not. While we can recognize the great strides we’ve made in our country, race continues to be a reality in our lives, among many other factors, that contribute to social inequality. From the passing of Proposition 8 denying marriage equality to Repatriation Agreements with different Asian countries deporting immigrants and breaking apart families, we as a country still have a long way to go to uphold our creed as the land of equal opportunity. Admittedly, while some people deny race and choose to embrace the passive existence of pure assimilation, we cannot deny the projection of race upon us. We are reminded of this everyday through the media, billboards, television roles, romantic comedies, action films, political figureheads, etc. Let’s admit it, race is a strange thing, and terribly inconsistent; if you look “white”, you will pass with the privileges; if you look Asian, you are Asian. In order to fully realize our potential as individuals in the American system, we must understand ourselves in the context of this socialized, racialized, economy-sized, super-sized, everything-realized country. This is where Asian American Studies proves more relevant than ever. While the classroom serves as a place for personal self-discovery, it is also the intersection of sociology, psychology, political science, public policy, law, history, interracial dynamics and groundbreaking research to uplift entire communities. Let us recall that the birth of Asian American Studies grew out of the fire in students during the ‘60s who demanded an alternative form of truth and knowledge facilitated by the community for the community. Such a grassroots movement was met with much opposition from administrators and elite decision-makers; for even the folks up top recognize the power in personal agency and self-realization to threaten social hierarchies.
Today, we must continue to preserve the existing legacies of our predecessors while creating new ones of our own. However, as the fight continues, new times call for new tools. We are able to take on so many more fronts with advancements in technology as well as the creativity and innovation of our own communities..."
Monday, July 20, 2009
Sunday, June 14, 2009
The "American Experience" -WTF?! Creepy taxi driver.
So at Kuala Lumpur, this taxi driver took me and this other person so we could split the car. He was already trying to persuade me to go to Kuala Lumpur and check out the city center. I said no, just drop me off at the airport. That was normal. Taxi drivers get commission for bringing people to hotels. Then after he dropped her off, he started asking me stuff about America being open. "I heard America is really open. Is it true that people can have babies without being married?" I was like "yea, doesn't that happen everywhere?" He said it couldn't happen in Malaysia. A child of unwed parents won't be able to register and receive the benefits of a citizen. Then he asked me about the average age of the first time people start having sex in America. Then he asked me if I wanted to come over to his place, just shower off, and he'll drive me back in the morning. Are you f'n crazy? He said he wanted the "American experience." I'm sure the mother of his 4 kids would appreciate that. Then we were pretty close to the airport terminal and he was asking me if I was scared. Of course, I'm f'n scared. You could have driven me anywhere! I said no, and I just wanna get to the airport. I initially was gonna bargain with him for 15 ringets, but F that...you can have my 20 ringets...I just wanna get the hell outta your car. The perks of traveling alone as a woman. I have come to the conclusion that people around the world assume American women are easy sluts. I still remember when I went to Vietnam and we had a white woman on our program and they treated her like she was gonna sleep with them or something, but we, looking Asian and all, never got that treatment. Anyway...my final reaction is WTF?!
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Post Secret for Asian Americans
I saw this featured on a friend's page from facebook.
http://postmimi.blogspot.com/
http://postmimi.blogspot.com/
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
J.Pham Travels
I'm in Penang, Malaysia right now and will be in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam soon. Ive been updating on http://jphamtravels.blogspot.com. Check it out. :)
Human Trafficking
Two years ago, I helped out with a panel put on by an anti-sex-trafficking organization called Stop the Traffick at UC Berkeley. Through this event, I was exposed to the atrocities of the sex trafficking industry in the US and the many myths that came with it.
This pushed me to research sex trafficking specifically in Vietnam for a class project, and I learned how at risk of trafficking many Vietnamese women are, especially poor women in rural areas. In a situation with such little resources, women are forced to use their most precious commodity, themselves, to sell for a high price in order to change the course of their futures as well as piously take care of their parents. I think about women in those desperate types of situations, and I shamefully think about the times when I thought my life sucked because I had two finals and a paper due in the same week. My friend once said that if that’s all I have to worry about, then my life is really good. He’s right.
I am about to head to Vietnam for three months on a program called the Vietnamese Advanced Summer Institute to learn Vietnamese starting mid-June. Since I had a close friend working in Malaysia at the Penang Office of the Coalition to Abolish Modern Day Slavery (CAMSA), an anti-human-trafficking organization, I wanted to stop by to visit him and volunteer at the organization.
I got to Penang, Malaysia a few days ago. Yesterday, I was introduced to the office and the staff. Here in Malaysia, there are a significant number of Malaysian locals, Chinese (who helped expand the economy here), Vietnamese (who are usually laborers), and South Asians. I learned that the goal of this CAMSA office is human trafficking, yet practically all of their cases have been labor-related cases because it's easier for laborers to contact the office, and because sex trafficking is organized crime and it gets complicated. Labor trafficking was not what I was familiar with, but I was definitely excited to learn about it.
I’ve been working on a powerpoint to train people about human trafficking and CAMSA. I found out that the majority of human trafficking cases are labor trafficking cases, but sex trafficking definitely gets more media attention. Just talking to people, I have heard that the majority of Vietnamese people in Malaysia are laborers. Vietnam, the source country, exports workers to Malaysia, the destination country. Continuing research for the powerpoint, I found out that Vietnam’s policy, Eradicate Hunger and Reduce Poverty Program, strongly encouraged workers to work abroad and send money home. When problems arise with Vietnamese workers abroad, Vietnamese officials will even come over to the destination country and solve the problem in order to guarantee the quality of their product (their workers). This can mean threatening the workers or even physically abusing them into submission so that they will return to work. It saddens me that Vietnamese citizens are treated by their own people as dispensable tools to build up Vietnam’s economy rather than dignified human beings.
Tonight, I joined two staff members to interview Vietnamese laborers. With my Vietnamese-American Vietnamese skills (not the best), I caught only about 65% of what she was saying, especially with her different accent. However, I could see her frustration at her work place. Racial tensions and language barriers prevent her from speaking up. All she wants to do is make money to send her children to school in Vietnam yet she gets jipped left and right as others blame her constantly for problems within the factory. She takes it because that’s all she can do and with her Vietnamese, she cannot communicate to the people who run the show. She accepts it as fate and just tries to work a little harder to earn enough money.
“Lives that flash in sunshine, and lives that are born in tears, receive their hue from circumstances.” -Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Ann Jacobs
This pushed me to research sex trafficking specifically in Vietnam for a class project, and I learned how at risk of trafficking many Vietnamese women are, especially poor women in rural areas. In a situation with such little resources, women are forced to use their most precious commodity, themselves, to sell for a high price in order to change the course of their futures as well as piously take care of their parents. I think about women in those desperate types of situations, and I shamefully think about the times when I thought my life sucked because I had two finals and a paper due in the same week. My friend once said that if that’s all I have to worry about, then my life is really good. He’s right.
I am about to head to Vietnam for three months on a program called the Vietnamese Advanced Summer Institute to learn Vietnamese starting mid-June. Since I had a close friend working in Malaysia at the Penang Office of the Coalition to Abolish Modern Day Slavery (CAMSA), an anti-human-trafficking organization, I wanted to stop by to visit him and volunteer at the organization.
I got to Penang, Malaysia a few days ago. Yesterday, I was introduced to the office and the staff. Here in Malaysia, there are a significant number of Malaysian locals, Chinese (who helped expand the economy here), Vietnamese (who are usually laborers), and South Asians. I learned that the goal of this CAMSA office is human trafficking, yet practically all of their cases have been labor-related cases because it's easier for laborers to contact the office, and because sex trafficking is organized crime and it gets complicated. Labor trafficking was not what I was familiar with, but I was definitely excited to learn about it.
I’ve been working on a powerpoint to train people about human trafficking and CAMSA. I found out that the majority of human trafficking cases are labor trafficking cases, but sex trafficking definitely gets more media attention. Just talking to people, I have heard that the majority of Vietnamese people in Malaysia are laborers. Vietnam, the source country, exports workers to Malaysia, the destination country. Continuing research for the powerpoint, I found out that Vietnam’s policy, Eradicate Hunger and Reduce Poverty Program, strongly encouraged workers to work abroad and send money home. When problems arise with Vietnamese workers abroad, Vietnamese officials will even come over to the destination country and solve the problem in order to guarantee the quality of their product (their workers). This can mean threatening the workers or even physically abusing them into submission so that they will return to work. It saddens me that Vietnamese citizens are treated by their own people as dispensable tools to build up Vietnam’s economy rather than dignified human beings.
Tonight, I joined two staff members to interview Vietnamese laborers. With my Vietnamese-American Vietnamese skills (not the best), I caught only about 65% of what she was saying, especially with her different accent. However, I could see her frustration at her work place. Racial tensions and language barriers prevent her from speaking up. All she wants to do is make money to send her children to school in Vietnam yet she gets jipped left and right as others blame her constantly for problems within the factory. She takes it because that’s all she can do and with her Vietnamese, she cannot communicate to the people who run the show. She accepts it as fate and just tries to work a little harder to earn enough money.
“Lives that flash in sunshine, and lives that are born in tears, receive their hue from circumstances.” -Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Ann Jacobs
Monday, June 8, 2009
My SEAGrad speech
Born and raised in the United States, I have always idolized the perfect “American family” on TV, a contrast to my own family. Growing up, my mother worked everyday leaving at 7am and coming home at 10pm at night, while my grandma took care of my siblings and me during the day. My ideal vision of two parents coming home from work early to spend time with their children was not my childhood reality.
It was not until college that I realized that this was not just the story of my life, but the lives of many others as a result of the war. Through joining organizations like REACH, the Asian and Pacific Islander Recruitment Retention Center, and the Southeast Asian Student Coalition (SASC), I finally understood my Vietnamese-American identity. These organizations helped me mature as a person and share with others what I had learned: we are the aftermath of a war that had nothing to do with us but everything to do with us, a war that was not our fault, a war that placed Southeast Asian faces on a continent far from its origin. We are our own community, a diaspora of Southeast Asians in the U.S. searching for a better life and struggling together in the process.
As a result of the War in Southeast Asia, also commonly known as the Vietnam War, our grandparents, our parents, our aunts, our uncles, our siblings are looked down upon on a daily basis for talking with an accent. They are the minorities that are discriminated and stereotyped in a country in which they don’t look like the majority. They are the laborers that we, their children, blamed and resented for not spending more time with us because they, not wanted to but needed to work long hours to raise us.
But let’s not forget that these people are the few who daringly risked everything to leave the country with only faith and hope in their pockets. They are also the courageous activists who chose to take a stand, who refused to succumb to the chains of unspoken injustices, unexplained imprisonments, and unjustified killings. They are the sacrificing solders, the courageous fighters, the daring heroes, the resilient survivors that have crossed oceans, skies, fields, and war zones to get us on this stage.
SEAGrad is a unique graduation that does more than celebrate the graduating individual. It commemorates the Southeast Asian community’s struggles, sacrifices, and triumphs and passes the spotlight to our mothers, our fathers, our sisters, our brothers, our aunts, our uncles, our grandparents, our friends, our community members who have sacrificed for us and are just as deserving of the achievement that we, as graduates, are standing on stage and taking credit for today.
This black gown I am wearing is stitched together by the sweat and tear drops of my family’s sacrifices and this cap I wear on my head is the crown of hopes and dreams they have endowed on me to be something great.
Our parents are living proof that freedom and higher education are privileges that not everyone is granted. College is one of the few ways to learn about our history and culture and change the course of our futures. As graduates of UC Berkeley, we are in a place of privilege. We have received the precious opportunity to encounter passion all around us, to mold our talents through community organizing, and to be empowered through dialogue. We, as graduates of the #1 public university in the nation, are expected to be great.
However, great does not necessarily mean making the most money or obtaining the highest position of power. Great is like the Southeast Asian refugees in this room who have proven to us everyday that it’s not what happens to you but how you deal with it that makes you great. Great is passion, is sacrifice, is serving, is living for something bigger than you. My friend once said, “You don’t just find passion. You create it. It’s trying your best and believing that your actions matter to someone, even if you don’t know who yet.” As the resilient survivors of war have done before us, let us, the class of 2009, rise above the gruesome shadows of history and commit our lives to moving forward and making positive change for the future.
It was not until college that I realized that this was not just the story of my life, but the lives of many others as a result of the war. Through joining organizations like REACH, the Asian and Pacific Islander Recruitment Retention Center, and the Southeast Asian Student Coalition (SASC), I finally understood my Vietnamese-American identity. These organizations helped me mature as a person and share with others what I had learned: we are the aftermath of a war that had nothing to do with us but everything to do with us, a war that was not our fault, a war that placed Southeast Asian faces on a continent far from its origin. We are our own community, a diaspora of Southeast Asians in the U.S. searching for a better life and struggling together in the process.
As a result of the War in Southeast Asia, also commonly known as the Vietnam War, our grandparents, our parents, our aunts, our uncles, our siblings are looked down upon on a daily basis for talking with an accent. They are the minorities that are discriminated and stereotyped in a country in which they don’t look like the majority. They are the laborers that we, their children, blamed and resented for not spending more time with us because they, not wanted to but needed to work long hours to raise us.
But let’s not forget that these people are the few who daringly risked everything to leave the country with only faith and hope in their pockets. They are also the courageous activists who chose to take a stand, who refused to succumb to the chains of unspoken injustices, unexplained imprisonments, and unjustified killings. They are the sacrificing solders, the courageous fighters, the daring heroes, the resilient survivors that have crossed oceans, skies, fields, and war zones to get us on this stage.
SEAGrad is a unique graduation that does more than celebrate the graduating individual. It commemorates the Southeast Asian community’s struggles, sacrifices, and triumphs and passes the spotlight to our mothers, our fathers, our sisters, our brothers, our aunts, our uncles, our grandparents, our friends, our community members who have sacrificed for us and are just as deserving of the achievement that we, as graduates, are standing on stage and taking credit for today.
This black gown I am wearing is stitched together by the sweat and tear drops of my family’s sacrifices and this cap I wear on my head is the crown of hopes and dreams they have endowed on me to be something great.
Our parents are living proof that freedom and higher education are privileges that not everyone is granted. College is one of the few ways to learn about our history and culture and change the course of our futures. As graduates of UC Berkeley, we are in a place of privilege. We have received the precious opportunity to encounter passion all around us, to mold our talents through community organizing, and to be empowered through dialogue. We, as graduates of the #1 public university in the nation, are expected to be great.
However, great does not necessarily mean making the most money or obtaining the highest position of power. Great is like the Southeast Asian refugees in this room who have proven to us everyday that it’s not what happens to you but how you deal with it that makes you great. Great is passion, is sacrifice, is serving, is living for something bigger than you. My friend once said, “You don’t just find passion. You create it. It’s trying your best and believing that your actions matter to someone, even if you don’t know who yet.” As the resilient survivors of war have done before us, let us, the class of 2009, rise above the gruesome shadows of history and commit our lives to moving forward and making positive change for the future.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
How I'd like to live life
1. Continuously write—to share, to inspire, to transform, to heal.
2. See mistakes not as regrets but as learning experiences.
3. Do things out of love. Love is selfless, serving, sacrificing. “Love makes the world go round.” Love for and from others makes life worth living.
4. Serve others. All great leaders first and foremost sacrifice in service of others.
5. Invest my time in relationships. When I am on my deathbed, I don’t want to be holding onto bank statements or report cards. I want to be bathing in the care of my friends and family. Give people roses when they can still smell them.
6. Appreciate every day. “Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That’s why they call it the present.” Some people would give anything for just one more day to live, to walk, to breathe, to learn, to love.
7. Travel the world. The world is my playground. Why limit myself only to what I’ve seen when there’s a whole world waiting for me to discover it? Different cultures, peoples, and stories eagerly wait to crush my misconceptions, dissolve my stereotypes, and astound my mind.
8. Never stop learning. I am never too old or too wise to learn. My college professors introduce me to a limited field of knowledge but urge me to aim for the unending horizon of research.
9. Never be ashamed of my circumstances but instead take pride in how I respond to them. Life is like a poker game. We play the cards we are dealt. I hope to have the “strength to accept the things that I can't change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.”
10. Never forget to put myself in the shoes of others. "Lives that flash in sunshine, and lives that are born in tears, receive their hue from circumstances." I want to remember that people are not just people and their actions, but a consequence of years of social circumstances as well. Everyone carries at least one secret that would break hearts and if we all remembered that, this place would be a better place.
11. Have the strength to let go. Sometimes attachments are so deeply rooted that it hurts to let go, but the truth has to be accepted and put behind us.
12. Forgive. “If someone hurts you, betrays you, or breaks your heart forgive them, for they have helped you learn about trust and the importance of being cautious to when you open your heart.”
2. See mistakes not as regrets but as learning experiences.
3. Do things out of love. Love is selfless, serving, sacrificing. “Love makes the world go round.” Love for and from others makes life worth living.
4. Serve others. All great leaders first and foremost sacrifice in service of others.
5. Invest my time in relationships. When I am on my deathbed, I don’t want to be holding onto bank statements or report cards. I want to be bathing in the care of my friends and family. Give people roses when they can still smell them.
6. Appreciate every day. “Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That’s why they call it the present.” Some people would give anything for just one more day to live, to walk, to breathe, to learn, to love.
7. Travel the world. The world is my playground. Why limit myself only to what I’ve seen when there’s a whole world waiting for me to discover it? Different cultures, peoples, and stories eagerly wait to crush my misconceptions, dissolve my stereotypes, and astound my mind.
8. Never stop learning. I am never too old or too wise to learn. My college professors introduce me to a limited field of knowledge but urge me to aim for the unending horizon of research.
9. Never be ashamed of my circumstances but instead take pride in how I respond to them. Life is like a poker game. We play the cards we are dealt. I hope to have the “strength to accept the things that I can't change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.”
10. Never forget to put myself in the shoes of others. "Lives that flash in sunshine, and lives that are born in tears, receive their hue from circumstances." I want to remember that people are not just people and their actions, but a consequence of years of social circumstances as well. Everyone carries at least one secret that would break hearts and if we all remembered that, this place would be a better place.
11. Have the strength to let go. Sometimes attachments are so deeply rooted that it hurts to let go, but the truth has to be accepted and put behind us.
12. Forgive. “If someone hurts you, betrays you, or breaks your heart forgive them, for they have helped you learn about trust and the importance of being cautious to when you open your heart.”
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